2016 Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray church attack

The 2016 Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray church attack was an Islamic State terrorist attack that targeted a church in the town of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy in northern France. At 9:43 AM on 26 July 2016, two men wielding knives entered the Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray during mass and took the priest, two nuns, and two churchgoers hostage. The 86-year-old priest, Jacques Hamel, was murdered by the attackers, who slit his throat after yelling "Daesh" (the Arabic acronym for ISIS). One of the hostages managed to flee, and police were alerted to the hostage crisis. At 11:00 AM, police stormed the church and killed the two gunmen. The attackers had killed one man and wounded three before they went out fighting, and the Islamic State claimed that two of its "soldiers" carried out the attack; one was a local who had failed to enter Syria in 2015.